Who is a marketing manager, what does he do and how much does he get paid?

Any enterprise must be competitive a priori – a firm position in the market, readiness for internal changes while monitoring market fluctuations and business requests, confident and flexible management. In order to maintain the course of the enterprise, strengthen and adapt to its changes, the company must have a marketing manager.

Peculiarities

The marketing manager is in charge of coordinating the marketing processes. Otherwise, it can be called a marketer. The main work of this specialist is considered to cover three areas: market research of suppliers of raw materials and sales, organization and implementation of advertising, control and analysis of the effectiveness of production . In simple terms, a marketer includes several professions (or functions) at once. Developer, creative, advertising agent, designer, manager – most marketing managers really have to take on these tasks.

The specialist necessarily explores the market, using relevant methods for this . He must also communicate with consumers (getting feedback). He is engaged in marketing and development of events that will attract a new segment of customers. Obviously, in any company focused on efficiency, the marketer is one of the leading specialists.

The nuance lies in the fact that different enterprises have different attitudes towards the main tasks of a marketing manager. And if one firm makes him a multifunctional worker, another defines a narrow scope.

Advantages and disadvantages

Initially, a marketer is considered a specialist who must study the tastes of the buyer, promote the product, and investigate which products will be in great demand. This person monitors, researches, analyzes, draws conclusions and offers solutions, the success forecasts of which are carefully calculated.

Profession benefits:

• demanded;
• highly paid;
• with great opportunities for career growth;
• interesting;
• involving a device in a variety of areas.

In a few years (from 2), a novice marketer can become the head of the marketing department.

Disadvantages of the profession:

• frequent stressful situations;
• great mental and emotional costs;
• frequent need to stay in the office after hours, etc.

All disadvantages are conditional, there may be more advantages than indicated in the list. It depends on the expectations of the applicant, and on his temperament, and on those professional attitudes that he has.

Job Responsibilities

The main occupation of a marketer is to conduct events that are focused on determining the target audience, studying the needs and assessing the indicators of demand for the results of production activities . The manager’s job description defines the scope of his duties, what exactly he does. Usually the job description consists of several sections: general provisions, duties, tasks, powers, level of responsibility.

Job responsibilities also depend on the area in which the marketer comes: network companies, trade, related to social communications. If it’s trade marketing, the sections in the responsibilities will be different, etc.

Market research and trends

The market in marketing research is clearly defined. It is characterized by customer needs, capacity and location.

Main market types:

• market of manufacturers or manufactured products;
• consumer;
• market of state institutions;
• intermediary;
• international.

With the help of market research, you can find out what is its volume in relation to the products in which the company specializes. You can find out who is the main buyer of your product or service, who is your direct competitor, what is the forecast for the development of the market, etc. After that, an analytical marketing plan is created.

Study of consumer behavior

The marketer evaluates the reasons that can influence the decision to purchase a product / service or refuse it. The result of the choice can be influenced by the family, any reference group for the buyer. Marketers must consider the reaction of the client, study how exactly he makes a purchase. This analysis provides information on the degree of satisfaction with the purchase, the likelihood of a repeat purchase, etc.

Researches marketing manager and motivation research. All of this is a large amount of work that requires extensive research. What stages the buyer goes through before the purchase, what affects it, what are the roles of people included in this purchase – all this is important for a specialist.

Target market selection

The target market is the point of application of marketing, which is an attractive market segment on which the company will focus its work. The marketing strategy involves 2 components: the choice of a direct target market, the creation of a marketing mix (which will satisfy the market’s need for a product).

The market selection process includes the following steps:

• segmentation – to determine the criteria for segmenting the market, to draw up segment profiles;
• selection of target segments – analysis of the degree of attractiveness of segments, selection of the main one;
• product positioning in the market – a marketing mix is ​​developed for each target segment.

There are many methods for developing a target market, and each of them is checked by a specialist and selected for a specific request.

Formation of competitive advantage

The competitive advantages of an organization are, first of all, the enumeration of the benefits that your product or service represents. First, a list of benefits is compiled, then they need to be ranked.

The next step is to compare your company’s benefits with those of your competitors. And at the fourth stage, the marketer is looking for absolute competitive advantages. Next, the specialist is looking for false competitive advantages, and finally, after all this voluminous work, a development and control plan is drawn up. Typically, an experienced specialist draws up 2 marketing action plans: the first plan is dedicated to competitive advantage for several years to come, the second is to keep the advantages relevant.

Development strategy development

A marketing strategy is a specific process that helps create conditions for the concentration of resources on the opportunity to increase the volume of products or services sold. Also, the goal of this strategy will be to obtain sustainable market competitive advantages.

The marketing strategy consists of:

• goal setting;
• analysis;
• planning and monitoring of enterprises.

The development of a strategy involves the definition of the mission and goals of the company, the basic strategy or strategic direction. This also includes the formation of competitive positioning.

Item management

Product management can occur at three levels – at the level of the brand, product variety, product range. One of the main objects of marketing influence is the product. And it is a controlled variable, with which the enterprise itself manages the market and the client. The product is a key marketing mix created to meet the needs of the buyer.

Managing customer relationships

The key goal of marketing services is to establish an ongoing, long-term relationship with the consumer. And they are possible only on the basis of knowledge of the client’s profile, his needs.

Important for a marketer:

• regularly monitor customer reactions to your own marketing efforts;
• maintain bidirectional communications with the client, which are based on feedback, on building a variety of convenient communication channels;
• create both a rational and emotional connection in the “client-company” connection.

The marketer must update the customer database. Ideally, this should be a CRM system. It is necessary to create such a personnel management system, the purpose of which is the formation and maintenance of consumer loyalty.

Career prospects

The most obvious prospect is to head the marketing department. If the company is large, this goal is most often seen by newly hired managers. Many business coaches advise those who want to build their own business in the future to get real experience as marketers. Such arguments are explained by the fact that market research, product promotion, product management research, and customer relationship building can be learned precisely by performing the duties of a marketer.

If you are still pursuing an education, but are planning to do an internship in an enterprise as a marketing manager, then the layer of work that you do in practice may be the best resume for subsequent employment.

Where can you work?

Mostly marketing managers are in demand in companies that are engaged in trade and the provision of services. Moreover, the scale of organizations is not so important. There are vacancies for marketers in large holdings and medium-sized organizations. Some specialists are afraid of employment in an outsourcing agency. But often this is a great solution to a professional issue: a marketing agency is focused on providing media services, advertising, and the manager will work together with colleagues. This can be a very convenient collaboration.

Marketers work together, and often this is beneficial for all participants in the process.

Where and how to study?

You can get the specialty of a marketing manager at a university, college, and even at special courses. In the latter case, retraining is assumed on the basis of existing education, as a rule, economic education.

But formal education, having a diploma is not enough. All theory is supported by practical skills. There are also advanced training courses for a marketer. They can take place in different ways: in the form of seminars, webinars, trainings. Such constant training will help you to remain in demand as a specialist, receive a decent salary and, of course, improve professionally.

How do you select junior marketers? Sharing experience

Hello, today we will tell you about our experience in recruiting novice marketers. There will be numbers and memes.

If you have already eaten a dog on this, go immediately to the comments and tell us how you do it 🙂

Features of the selection of a novice specialist

If you want to find a confident marketing specialist, but also with relevant experience in a particular niche, prepare for several months. There are practically no such people in the public domain.

If you are looking for a mid-level specialist, then there are more chances. 100 responses to a vacancy in a couple of days. There are plenty to choose from. A couple of weeks or a month and you’re on your way.

And if you need a novice specialist or an intern, get ready for the tin. Count on a couple of thousand responses. We learned how to select suitable specialists from this abundance in a couple of weeks. Now we’ll tell you how.

We are preparing a vacancy

We, like everyone else, need specialists aimed at rapid growth in professional terms.

To do this, we tell a little about ourselves, what we will have to do and separately describe what benefits this will bring to the candidate. Maybe that’s why we get so many responses.

Compare any vacancy from the list

And our beautiful vacancy

When we posted a vacancy for an assistant for the second time, we set a salary of 5,000 rubles so that there were fewer responses. As a result, we got more than 2500 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

How do we filter such a flow of candidates

First approach: Questionnaire + test task

Because we have an abundance of candidates, we can afford to choose the most motivated. To do this, we partially borrowed a questionnaire for 13 questions about personal qualities and motivation, diluting it with light questions on marketing. You can check it out . The idea was that it would be filled in by about 20%, 10% of ours would be sent in a rough form, the rest would be ignored.

To our surprise, more than half of the applicants filled out. This meant that we had about 500 candidate profiles that needed to be reviewed and still phoned.

During the week, we selected about 50 people and conducted short 15-20 minute interviews with them. Of these, about 30 offered to take a test task.

Test

In the test there were 4 tasks of varying degrees of difficulty. From preparing a presentation based on data, to gathering an audience through Target Hunter. Because candidates were of different levels, each task was accompanied by instructions and additional materials. The task is to determine the ingenuity and independence of the candidate, and not his ability to use any specific tools.

Bottom line: Out of 30 people in the chat, only 8 people completed the test: (But this stage allowed us to weed out people with low motivation. In conversations, they were excellent candidates. It’s not clear what made them go this way and score. But we didn’t try to find out.

But the remaining candidates were super-cool. I had to take two. It’s been a normal flight for almost 4 months now.

How did you give feedback to those who did not fit the vacancy?

A very unpleasant moment when HR does not give feedback on the vacancy, sends a refusal to xx, or even scores and does not answer (do you recognize yourself?). We try not to do that.

Here is our beautiful disclaimer landing page with helpful materials.

Alternative approach: Test task + questionnaire

It would seem that we have found a good way to look for motivated newcomers and choose the best from them. If not for the need for another novice specialist, which broke the whole process for us and made it even better.

One fine day, we needed an employee who would post on Instagram on a schedule, respond to comments, and gradually take over the creation of posts, the formation of a content plan.

We posted a vacancy, set a salary of 5,000 rubles in the hope of fewer responses, and as a result received even more. And the questionnaire was already filled out by 50%, and all 70.

A little taken aback by such an influx of candidates, we simply swapped the questionnaire and test. Now we choose not from 1000 questionnaires, but only from a couple of hundred completed test 😥

From the pros: we have more than 200 test cases completed. Of the minuses: it’s still a lot.

And how do you select marketers when there are a lot of worthy candidates for one place? Astrology, human design, lottery?! Please tell us in the comments.